Saturday, September 13, 2008

"It's eerily reminiscent of what they tried back in 1993," said John McCain, shown in the video above in Iowa on October 11, 2007. "I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig."

McCain was referring to Hillary Clinton's health care proposals during her husband's administration and her presidential campaign.

McCain's language, in fact, sounds "eerily reminiscent" of Barack Obama's. He used the same expression Obama used in disparaging McCain as a supposed "change agent." Of course, one who voted with George Bush over 90% of the time and described the economy as "fundamentally sound" is no "change agent." Obama's accurate statement gave rise to the McCain camp's lie that the Democratic candidate was referring to Sarah Palin.

Anyway, doesn't the "straight talking" McCain campaign's logic also apply to their own candidate? Since the health care proposals McCain criticized were Hillary's and Hillary uses lipstick, wasn't McCain calling Hillary a pig?

On "The View" of September 12, 2008, shown above, Joy Behar and Barbara Walters questioned McCain about his use of the same expression:

Behar: "There are ads running from your campaign. One of them is saying that Obama, when he said you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig, was talking about Sarah. There's another ad that says that Obama was interested in teaching sex education to kindergartners. Now we know that those two ads are untrue, they're lies. And yet, you at the end of it say, 'I approve these messages.' Do you really approve them?"

McCain: Actually, they're not lies and if you've seen some of the ads that are running against me, but the point is...

Walters: "By the way you yourself said the same thing about putting lipstick on a pig. You yourself used the same expression."

McCain: "When I was talking about a health care plan."

Walters" "Yeah, but he talked about change. He wasn't talking about Sarah Palin."

McCain: "Senator Obama chooses his words very carefully, OK? He shouldn't have said it."

Regarding McCain's response, what difference does it make that he was talking about health care while Obama was talking about change? And what is McCain implying when he states that Obama "chooses his words carefully"? That McCain himself doesn't, and that therefore he can use the expression while Obama can't? Is this the "carelessness defense"? And if McCain speaks carelessly, what does this say about his image as a believable, "straight talker"?